the schooner pitched, away swings my feet clear o' the nigger's heads--'cause, d' ye see, we chanced for to be stowed on the 'tween-decks, an' another tier there was, stuffed in her lower hold--an' there I stuck, mate, so as I couldn't help watchin' the whole chase, till at last the hatch slacks nip a bit, and down I plumps into the dark again. "'Well, bo', the breeze got lighter, an' to all seemin' the cursed schooner held her own; but hows'ever, the sloop-o'-war kept it up all day, and once or twice she tips us a long shot; till by sunset, as I reckoned, we hears no more on her. The whole night long, again, there we stews as thick as peas--I keeps harknin' to the sighs and groans, an' the wash along the side, in a sort of a doze; an' s'help me Bob, I fancies for a moment I'm swinging in my hammock in the foc'sle, an it's no more but the bulkheads and timbers creakin'. Then I thinks it's some un else I dreams on, as is oneasy, like to choke for heat and thirst; and I'm a-chucklin' at him--when up I wakes with the cockroaches swarming over my face. Another groan runs from that end to this, the whole lot on us tries hard, and kicks their neighbours to turn, an' be blowed if I knowed but I was buried in a churchyard, with the horrid worms all a-crawl about me. All on a suddent, nigh-hand to daybreak it was, I hears a gun to wind'ard, so with that I contrives for to scramble up with my eye to the scuttle-port. 'Twas a stiffish breeze, an' I see'd some'at lift on a sea like a albatross's wing, as one may say--though what wor this but the _Irish's_ bit of a tender, standing right across our bows--for the schooner, ye see, changed her course i' the night-time, rig'lar slaver's dodge, thinkin' for to drop the sloop-o'-war, sure enough. But as for the little f'lucca, why they hadn't bargained for her at all, lying-to as she did, with a rag o' sail up, in the troughs of the sea, till the schooner was close on her.